Pros/cons of SLI?

Hello everyone. I'm thinking about buying a second GTX 260 (Core 216) to run in SLI on my 750i FTW board but I don't really understand that much about how SLI works. I'm wondering if this is a good idea. Will it make a significant increase in gaming performance with my build? What are the pros/cons of SLI?

Also, will it mess up my overclock by needing lots more voltage on the northbridge?

I went from a 8800GS to GTX260 SLI. It was a huge jump, however i have never used the one card on it's own to game so not sure what the performance jump would be to two of the cards.

I did run a 3dmark with one card and got just over 16k and went up 19.5 in SLI. A further 21,430 when oc'd to 4.4Ghz. This is with cards at stock. That's all i have done with one card compared to two. It might be a little bit overkill for a 19" monitor though. I would probably only go SLI if you had 1920x1080 res or higher, especially with high end cards.

It does affect your north bridge overclock aswell. It will require a few more notches up in voltage to become stable. Well that's all mine needed anyway.

Pros:
Cheaper than buying 1 very high end card.
Quad monitor support
More PPD if you are a folder
more things becoming optimized for SLI

My North bridge required more voltage or i would get texture errors in game.

Which is why I said it shouldn't, you have a different motherboard so things might be different. You could still be right but I would expect a 780i to perform better than a striker II as its reference design.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ned99

Hey thanks for the feedback. I'm planning on getting a 24" monitor for Christmas so maybe I'll wait until the new DX11 cards come out and prices hopefully drop on older cards to buy a second GTX 260.

Do that, for now that GTX 260 should be more than enough even for upcoming games.

i really dont have experiences with multiple GPUs but i usually hear.. microstutters... something like constant mini dips in FPS that might be barely noticeable but others are quite annoyed.. i wish there would be some kind of "official test" tho..

i really dont have experiences with multiple GPUs but i usually hear.. microstutters... something like constant mini dips in FPS that might be barely noticeable but others are quite annoyed.. i wish there would be some kind of "official test" tho..

drivers fixed the microstutters so that is no longer an issue and i don't experience mini fps drops.